A previous production version for validation and verification purposes; (SHOULD)

Beta or Release-Candidate version to be made available within first month of that release. (RECOMMENDED)

These three versions will vary by package and system, but users should have the ability to test newer versions as they become available and still have access to production versions. No attempt will be made to force vendors to provide three versions immediately. There should be a migration to this policy over time with the Baseline Configuration compliance procedure used to track progress and ensure that versions are added/updated as appropriate.

The primary concern of this policy is that, when a new production version of a package is being deployed at an HPC site it will not disturb the existing userbase. It is at site's discretion to decide which version is the current default but, it should still allow at least one previous production version to serve gracefully users who have incompatibilities with newer software and, also allow for testing in advance.